Forging America: The History of Bethlehem Steel - Chapter 8

Clinton's health care plan failed, and Barnette continued beating the drum for more trade restrictions against foreign steel. But even the industry's trade victory in 1994 served as little more than a temporary painkiller for Bethlehem Steel's terminal illness.

More plants were closing, more layoffs were coming and the company's lopsided retiree-to-worker ratio had helped create a pension fund that was underfunded by $1 billion, despite a $406 million payment that year by the company.

Two decades of decline had finally caught up to the plants that pioneered the Grey beam, defended America and turned a fledgling steel company into an industrial titan that once employed 283,765 people.

For the first time in 122 years, the pounding, pressing, rolling and shaping was over.

On Nov. 18, 1995, Bethlehem Steel stopped making steel in Bethlehem.

The workers and the city had known it was coming, but still the end was painful.

Dean Lorrah wanted to go out with class that day. Nicknamed ''Rambo'' for his Vietnam War service and penchant for wearing camouflage hard hats with twigs attached, Lorrah wanted to do something different.

At 5:15 p.m., as the last ladle was poured at the basic oxygen furnace, Lorrah, wearing full combat gear, unfurled a 16-by-20-foot American flag and lowered it from his crane. On cue, his buddies in the chemical lab played a tape of Kate Smith's ''God Bless America'' over the loudspeaker, as Lorrah threw an MIA-POW hat into the ladle as a tribute to fallen comrades. Employees who worked with Lorrah for 26 years wiped tears from their eyes with one hand and saluted him with the other.

Over at the blast furnaces, Herman Stangl, a 41-year employee, who was known as ''Casey,'' whistled ''Amazing Grace'' over a speaker. Some employees in other departments trashed their work stations and stole tools in protest. But Lorrah and Stangl didn't want to taint their last day.

Lorrah would close two more mills in the next three years as he moved from struggling mill to struggling mill, trying to keep his career in steel going.

Even today, workers feel the pain of loss.

''The steel that built half of New York City was rolled in those mills and they just let it all die,'' says Tom Jones, business agent and former union president for the United Steelworkers local in Bethlehem. ''That's just wrong. Have we completely forgotten where we came from?''

Stephen Donches hadn't. Donches grew up on Selfridge Street in the shadow of the mill, next door to the Check family, whose nine sons all worked at the plant. As he grew up, there was little question where he would work. Donches' father was a welder and union representative, and his grandfathers immigrated from Hungary and Slovakia to work at The Steel. They were proud that young Steve would be the first in the family to become a corporate executive.

He started in the accounting office in 1967 and soon moved into public affairs, where he focused on state government affairs. Other employees might have bad-mouthed the company, but Donches always preferred talking about its mystique and its impact on the community and the world. Bethlehem Steel or its forerunner, the Bethlehem Iron Co., had made steel since 1873, and he wanted everyone to know that.

As Bethlehem Steel was closing mills on the South Side, it was constructing a plan to reuse the vacated plant lands in a way that would carry the legacy of Bethlehem Steel into the next generation. Donches, the company's vice president of public affairs, was put in charge of that project.

''Steel made right here helped build America and defend it,'' Donches said. ''If we don't do something to save this, it will be gone forever, and future generations will miss out on experiencing what happened here.''

By 1996, most of the nearly 1,800 acres of Bethlehem Steel land that stretched along the Lehigh River for 41/2 miles was idle. The closing of the Structural Steel Division left only the coke works, the combination mill, the BethForge and Centec still operating. BethForge and Centec would be sold.

Brandenburg Industrial Services, a Chicago salvage company, had already begun the massive task of tearing down about half of the 4 million square feet of rusted and beaten plant buildings, but Bethlehem Steel had big ideas for the rest. In 1996, the company announced a $1 billion plan to turn the land and buildings into a bustling center for shopping, recreation and even heavy industry.

The 160 acres between the Fahy and Minsi Trail bridges would be the $450 million Bethlehem Works. It would be a shopping, entertainment and cultural district that would include hotels, restaurants, trendy upscale bars, shops, an ice skating facility and a 14-screen cinema. But the anchor of the project would be a $200 million National Museum of Industrial History, set inside the cavernous No. 2 Machine Shop that Bethlehem Iron Superintendent John Fritz started building in 1887 to do work for the Navy. The museum would draw more than 1 million people a year to Bethlehem's struggling South Side and help the city replace the loss of the company that dominated and defined it for nearly a century.

The 1,600 acres east of the Minsi Trail Bridge would be the Bethlehem Commerce Center, a business, commercial and industrial district capable of drawing $1 billion worth of private investment. Office buildings, warehouses and light industrial companies would sprout from the scarred landscape. They would be funded by investors enticed by the built-in rail system, access to Interstate 78, and proximity to New York and other Northeast markets.